refusenik

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Beginning in the mid-1960s, a movement began among Soviet Jews seeking permission to emigrate to Israel. Despite an agreement to allow emigrations, Soviet authorities subjected most of those who sought to leave to a campaign of intimidation: Soviet citizenship might be revoked; many were fired from their jobs; they were harrassed, their phones were bugged, and they faced hostile interrogations. The most vocal activists, such as Anatoly (later Natan) Sharansky and Vladimir Slepak, were arrested on charges of treason and espionage and sent to psychiatric hospitals or labor camps. Although eventually, in the 1970s and again in the Gorbachev era, tens of thousands of Jews were allowed to leave, many were denied exit visas for months, years, and even decades on grounds of national security or political animosity. These unfortunates became known as "refuseniks," and their plight, both in itself and as shorthand for the plight of Soviet Jewry in general was a cause célèbre in the West and a sticking point in U.S.-Soviet relations.

Jews had always faced pervasive discrimination in the USSR, but several factors coincided in the 1960s to crystallize Jewish national consciousness and stimulate a drive to emigrate. Some were the same factors that spurred the dissident movement. The Khrushchev-era Thaw produced new interest in Jewish culture. The trial of Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuly Daniel in 1966 signaled a crackdown on the intelligentsia, a disproportionate number of whom were Jews. The 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia convinced many that their hopes for reform were pipe dreams.

Other factors were specific to the Jewish question. Jewish groups in the West began to organize around the issue of Soviet antisemitism and to make contact with Soviet Jews. Most importantly, Israel's stunning victory in the Six-Day War (1967) stirred the imagination of Soviet Jews and made them listen more attentively to Israel's call, while the vicious and scurrilous anti-Zionist campaign that followed made Jews feel that there was no place for them in the USSR.

Large-scale Jewish emigration began in earnest in 1971. Nearly 13,000 left that year, followed by 32,000 in 1972. Most of the early immigrants went to Israel. The flow of émigrés ebbed in the mid-1970s, then soared to a high of 50,000 in 1979, with more than half going to the United States before slowing to a trickle following the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow under the repressive hands of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko. Why did the Soviet government allow Jews to emigrate at all? One theory cites external factors, including intense pressure from Jewish and human-rights organizations in the West, Soviet attempts to win concessions in the era of détente, and legal measures such as the Jackson-Vanik Amendment in the United States, which tied most-favored-nation trading status to a country's emigration policies. Another theory gives primary credit to internal factors: the pressure of Jewish nationalism itself, a desire to rid the country of troublemakers, the hope of using emigration to plant spies in capitalist countries. Both theories presume that Soviet emigration policy was coherent and followed a set of clear goals articulated at the top. Archival documents reveal the contrary; the central authorities had little expertise on the issue and reacted on the spur of the moment to biased reports from self-interested bureaucracies.

In 1987, after initial hesitation, Mikhail Gorbachev allowed the majority of refuseniks to leave as perestroika and glasnost gathered steam. With the fall of the Soviet Union, most restrictions on emigration were rescinded, and the Jewish exodus became a flood.

Bibliography

Lewin-Epstein, Noah; Ro'i, Yaacov; and Ritterband, Paul, eds. (1997). Russian Jews on Three Continents: Migration and Resettlement. London: Frank Cass.

Morozov, Boris, ed. (1999). Documents on Soviet Jewish Emigration. Portland, OR: Frank Cass.

—JONATHAN D. WALLACE

• World Relations and Conditions - refusenik: Soviet citizen refused permission to emigrate
• Social Types, Norms, and Symbols - refusenik: Informal. Soviet citizen, esp. a Jew, who was denied permission to emigrate

For other uses, see Refusenik (disambiguation).

January 10, 1973. Jewish refuseniks demonstrate in front of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the right to emigrate to Israel.

A type 2 USSR exit visa. This type of visa was issued to those who received permission to leave the USSR permanently and lost their Soviet citizenship. Many people who wanted to emigrate were unable to receive this kind of exit visa.

Refusenik (Russian: отказник, otkaznik, from "отказ", otkaz "refusal") was an unofficial term for individuals, typically but not exclusively Soviet Jews, who were denied permission to emigrate abroad by the authorities of the former Soviet Union and other countries of the Eastern bloc.^[1] The term refusenik is derived from the "refusal" handed down to a prospective emigrant from the Soviet authorities.

Over time, "refusenik" has entered colloquial English usage for any type of protester.^{[citation needed]}

Contents 1 History 2 See also 3 Memoirs 4 Fiction 5 Documentary films 6 References

History

See also: Persecution of Jews#In Russia and the Soviet Union

A large number of Soviet Jews applied for exit visas to leave the Soviet Union, especially in the period following the 1967 Six-Day War. While some were allowed to leave, many were refused permission to emigrate, either immediately or after their cases would languish for years in the OVIR (ОВиР, "Отдел Виз и Регистрации", "Otdel Viz i Registratsii", English: Office of Visas and Registration), the MVD (Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs) department responsible for exit visas. In many instances, the reason given for denial was that these persons had been given access, at some point in their careers, to information vital to Soviet national security and could not now be allowed to leave.^[2]

During the Cold War, Soviet Jews were thought to be a security liability or possible traitors.^[3] To apply for an exit visa, the applicants (and often their entire families) would have to quit their jobs, which in turn would make them vulnerable to charges of social parasitism, a criminal offense.^[2]

Many Jews encountered systematic, institutional antisemitism which blocked their opportunities for advancement. Some government sectors were almost entirely off-limits to Jews.^[3][4] In addition, Soviet restrictions on religious education and expression prevented Jews from engaging in Jewish cultural and religious life. While these restrictions led many Jews to seek emigration,^[5] requesting an exit visa was itself seen as an act of betrayal by Soviet authorities. Thus, prospective emigrants requested permission to emigrate at great personal risk, knowing that an official refusal would often be accompanied by dismissal from work and other forms of social ostracism and economic pressure.

A leading proponent and spokesman of the refusenik movement during the 1970s was Natan Sharansky. Sharansky's involvement with the Moscow Helsinki Monitoring Group helped to establish the struggle for emigration rights within the greater context of the human rights movement in the USSR. His arrest on charges of espionage and treason and subsequent trial contributed to international support for the refusenik cause.

Refuseniks included Jews who desired to emigrate on religious grounds, Jews seeking to immigrate to Israel for Zionist aspirations, and relatively secular Jews desiring to escape continuous state-sponsored antisemitism. Also, large numbers of other ethnic groups tried to escape persecutions or desired to seek a better life, including Volga Germans attempting to leave for Germany and Armenians wanting to join their diaspora.

The coming to power of Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union in the mid-1980's, and his policies of glasnost and perestroika, as well as a desire for better relations with the West, led to major changes, and most refuseniks were allowed to emigrate. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union at the end of the decade, the term "otkaznik" largely passed into history.

See also

• Eastern Bloc emigration and defection
• Aliyah from the Soviet Union and post-Soviet states
• The dissolution of the Soviet Union and emigration to Israel
• Herman Branover
• Defection
• Lishkat Hakesher
• Jackson-Vanik amendment
• Balseros, Cuban citizens who are not legally allowed to migrate and who cross to Florida in improvised boats
• Movement to Free Soviet Jewry
• Iosif Begun

Memoirs

• Natan Sharansky, Fear No Evil. The Classic Memoir of One Man's Triumph over a Police State. ISBN 1-891620-02-9.
• Chaim Potok, Gates of November: Chronicles of the Slepak Family ISBN 0-394-58867-3

Fiction

• David Shrayer-Petrov (Russian: Шраер-Петров, Давид), Herbert and Nelly (a novel, in Russian, abridged 1986; complete 1992, 2006). A saga of a refusenik family set in Moscow in the 1980s.

Documentary films

• In 2008 filmmaker Laura Bialis released a documentary film, Refusenik, chronicling the human rights struggle of the Soviet refuseniks.^[6]

References

1. ^ Mark Azbel' and Grace Pierce Forbes. Refusenik, trapped in the Soviet Union. Houghton Mifflin, 1981. ISBN 0-395-30226-9
2. ^ ^{a b} The Right to Emigrate, cont. Beyond the Pale. The History of Jews in Russia. Exhibit by Friends and Partners
3. ^ ^{a b} Joseph Dunner. Anti-Jewish discrimination since the end of World War II. Case Studies on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms: A World Survey. Vol. 1. Willem A. Veenhoven and Winifred Crum Ewing (Editors). Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. 1975. Hague. ISBN 90-247-1779-5, ISBN 90-247-1780-9; pages 69-82
4. ^ Benjamin Pinkus. The Jews of the Soviet Union: the history of a national minority. Cambridge University Press, January 1990. ISBN 978-0-521-38926-6; pp. 229-230.
5. ^ Boris Morozov (Editor). Documents on Soviet Jewish Emigration. Taylor & Francis, 1999. ISBN 978-0-7146-4911-5
6. ^ The struggle behind the Iron Curtain. Philadelphia Daily News. June 27, 2008. Accessed June 28, 2008.

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - refusenik (jøde, der ikke fik lov at rejse ud af Sovjet), person, der protesterer

Nederlands (Dutch)
jood die geen toestemming kreeg Sovjet Unie te verlaten, geen kleur bekennen (kaartspel)

Français (French)
n. - refuznik

Deutsch (German)
n. - sowjetischer Jude, dem die Ausreise nach Israel verweigert wurde

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - αρνητής νόμου, συστήματος κλπ., Εβραίος της πρώην Σοβ. Ενωσης στον οποίο αρνούνται άδεια εξόδου από τη χώρα

Italiano (Italian)
refusenik

Português (Portuguese)
n. - não permissão para emigrar

Русский (Russian)
отказник

Español (Spanish)
n. - judío de la ex Unión Soviética a quien se impedía emigrar a Israel, persona que en protesta se niega a obedecer las leyes

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - ryss med strateg kunsk. med utreseförbud

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
持不同政见的俄罗斯公民, 被拒移民人

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 持不同政見的俄羅斯公民, 被拒移民人

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 출국 금지 시민

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - リフューズニク

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) عالم سوفييتي محظور عليه أن يهاجر‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮אסיר ציון, מסורב-עלייה, אדם המסרב למלא פקודות או לציית לחוק, במיוחד כמחאה‬

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